“Unforgettable Moments: The Jaw-Dropping Celebrity Encounters That Left Fans Speechless!”
I went and plopped down next to an African-American man with bleach blonde hair. This was a low-minimum table, so in my not-exactly-clear-headed state I was able to play a few rounds without losing a bunch of money. I clearly had no idea what I was doing, so the guy next to me started offering advice. Other than a few uttered tips, the table and people were mostly silent. I sat there rubbing my feet, (had kicked off my shoes), played cards for only about 10-15 minutes when my friends came over to get me. They wanted to leave to find a hotel to crash at. Sleepiness was creeping up on us now that we had slowed down. I got up, thanked my bleach blonde neighbor and off we went.
When we got outside, my friend Ted asked, “Do you know who that was?” “What do you mean? Just some random people pulling an all nighter at a blackjack table”, I responded. He then shared that I had been sitting with Dennis Rodman. I’d had NO IDEA. Mind you, this was in about 1996, at the height of his crazy notoriety and success with the Chicago Bulls and a couple years before he married Carmen Electra.
Yep… and got roasted for it by my colleagues!
Wednesday night, mid-November, more than a few years ago (geez, like 17?). I was working the evening shift (4:00pm – close) at the concierge desk at the CN Tower in Toronto. It was about 20 minutes to close (11:00pm), the front cashiers had been closed, so I was pretty much the only person on the entrance floor.
My Hosting Lead (the floor manager for the ‘tourist’ parts of the tower) calls down to tell me that SkyPod, the upper small deck, is closed; that there’s about a dozen people upstairs and about 20 more in the restaurant, and that we should be done soon after 11. I figure it’s pretty dead, so I pull out my history notes for the test the next day.
Front doors slide open, and in walk five young guys in jackets and jeans. One of them comes up and says “Is the Tower still open?”.
I say “Yes, but we’re closing in about 20 minutes, and SkyPod is closed”.
He says, “We just want to go up and jump on that glass floor!”.
Ok, sure, no fuss. I sell them five tickets, radio the Hosting Lead to tell them there’s incoming, and go back to the effects of deflation on the Weimar Republic.
About five minutes later, my radio crackles and security says “Code 99, code 99 (everyone listen up), please be advised ’N Sync is in the house!”.
Whups. Apparently I should have paid more attention who I was selling tickets to.
In my defense, I didn’t expect the what was pretty much the biggest selling group at the time to wander in at close to 11 on a Wednesday night. And I’m not sure I would have recognized them if I had been expecting them; they looked like five college guys.
Still. I got razzed for about 6 months for being clueless – although I can say that they were tremendously polite, apparently treated everyone well, and when they came down they all stopped to say thanks and good night. Way politer than many celebs I’ve had interactions with!
Around five years ago, my wife and I were living in Hawaii. Our town had its share of celebrity visitors, not just because of the beautiful beaches, but because they could escape into normalcy and go relatively unnoticed….with the exception of President Obama.
It was a daily occurrence for my wife and I to walk to our local Whole Foods. This Whole Foods is different; it’s absent of pretentiousness and the parking lot is far from aggressive. It has a community feel where we gathered with friends almost nightly for dinner and beers. Small-talk with strangers is welcomed.
My first move every time I entered the store was to go directly to the lilikois (passion fruit). The sweet slimy crack inside was highly addictive; I was always chasing that first hit. I’d buy a couple pounds a week, and I was always scoping the latest crop.
One time I arrived at the new batch, and I was met by a girl in a baseball cap approximately my age inquisitively eyeing the tiny fruit she held in her hand. I stood directly next to her and rapidly loaded my basket with the week’s fix. I sensed her uncertainty as to which fruit to choose, so I offered up my months of lilikoi expertise. “The bigger the better, you can’t go wrong.” She looked up, smiled, and at that point I saw that she was strikingly attractive. There was a seemingly long pause, and then she replied, “Oh, they don’t have to be wrinkly” (yes, this was the actual conversation).
Reflecting back, I feel like she paused because she was unsure if I was approaching her because she’s a celebrity, or that it was in fact just making small talk with a complete stranger.
The whole time my wife stood off to the side but eventually locked eyes with the attractive shopper. As awkwardly as imaginable, my wife muttered, “Lilikois are awesome”, and then we slowly departed the interaction.
When it was just the two of us, out of sight from the girl, I asked my wife why she was acting so weird. She couldn’t believe I had been unknowingly talking to Rachel McAdams who was on the island filming the movie “Aloha”.
